Flower in the Pocket Requires an NPR Tote for a Brain

May 6, 2009

Not showing anything like an authorial personality means never having to say you’re sorry. Lazy “realism” is even good for an award or two on the law-of-averages festival circuit—Pusan and Rotterdam, in this case. In the inverse of an auspicious debut, Malaysia’s Liew Seng Tat has made a film studiously burnished of anything to suggest he had input into its creation: arbitrary static framing, ambient soundtracking, vague performances, tick-tock monotonous cutting, and natural-sourced lighting. Flower in the Pocket concerns two brothers, not-especially-spontaneous-or-capable child actors, left by their father to sprout like weeds. Ethnic Chinese Mandarin speakers at a Bahasa school, the boys are perpetual classroom scapegoats. Wandering through outer Kuala Lumpur, they interact with a puppy and tomboyish Muslim girl. Apparent levity includes mild scatology and the brothers scampering for the bus only to discover they’ve accidentally dressed in each other’s mis-sized uniforms. Shot on location in rundown districts and focused on just-getting-by families, the film can stake some journalistic claim to social relevance, but you’d have to have an NPR tote for a brain to call this art.